• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.199-210
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• 2012

The recent researches on the automatic berthing control problems have used various kinds of tools as a control method such as expert system, fuzzy logic controllers and artificial neural network (ANN). Among them, ANN has proved to be one of the most effective and attractive options. In a marine context, the berthing maneuver is a complicated procedure in which both human experience and intensive control operations are involved. Nowadays, in most cases of berthing operation, auxiliary devices are used to make the schedule safer and faster but none of above researches has taken into account. In this study, ANN is applied to design the controllers for automatic ship berthing using assistant devices such as bow thruster and tug. Using back-propagation algorithm, we trained ANN with set of teaching data to get a minimal error between output values and desired values of four control outputs including rudder, propeller revolution, bow thruster and tug. Then, computer simulations of automatic berthing were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the system. The results of the simulations showed good performance for the proposed berthing control system.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.304-308
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• 2007

This paper deals with ANN(Artificial Neural Networks) and its application to automatic ship berthing. Due to the characteristic of ship's manoeuvre comparing with other moving objects on land, it has been known that the automatic control for ship's berthing cannot cope with various berthing situations such as various port shape and approaching directions. for these reasons. the study on automatic berthing using ANN usually have been carried out based on one port shape and predetermined approaching direction. In this paper, new algorithm with ANN controller was suggested to cope with these problems. Under newly suggested algorithm, the controller can select appropriate weights on the link of neural networks according to various situations. so the ship can maintain stable berthing operation even in different situations. Numerical simulations are carried out with this control system to find its improvement.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.192-201
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• 2016

This study examined a PD controller and its application to automatic berthing control of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). First, a nonlinear mathematical model was established for the maneuvering of the USV in the presence of environmental forces. A PD control algorithm was then applied to control the rudder and propeller during an automatic berthing process. The algorithm consisted of two parts, namely the forward velocity control and heading angle control. The control algorithm was designed based on longitudinal and yaw dynamic models of the USV. The desired heading angle was obtained using the "line of sight" method. Finally, computer simulations of automatic USV berthing were performed to verify the proposed controller subjected to the influence of disturbance forces. The results of the simulation revealed a good performance of the developed berthing control system.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.139-146
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• 2006

In this paper vector code correlation(VCC) method and an algorithm to promote the image processing performance in building an effective measurement system using cameras are described for automatically berthing and controlling the ship equipped with side thrusters. In order to realize automatic ship berthing, it is indispensable that the berthing assistant system on the ship should continuously trace a target in the berth to measure the distance to the target and the ship attitude, such that we can make the ship move to the specified location. The considered system is made up of 4 apparatuses compounded from a CCD camera, a camera direction controller, a popular PC with a built in image processing board and a signal conversion unit connected to parallel port of the PC. The object of this paper is to reduce the image processing time so that the berthing system is able to ensure the safety schedule against risks during approaching to the berth. It could be achieved by composing the vector code image to utilize the gradient of an approximated plane found with the brightness of pixels forming a certain region in an image and verifying the effectiveness on a commonly used PC. From experimental results, it is clear that the proposed method can be applied to the measurement system for automatic ship berthing and has the image processing time of fourfold as compared with the typical template matching method.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.563-568
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• 2007

In this paper, an adaptive neural network controller and its application to automatic berthing control of ship is presented. The neural network controller is trained online using adaptive interaction technique without any teaching data and off-line training phase. Firstly, the neural networks used to control rudder and propeller during automatic berthing process are presented. Secondly, computer simulations of automatic ship berthing are carried out in Pusan bay to verify the proposed controller under the influence of wind disturbance and measurement noise. The results of simulation show good performance of the developed berthing control system.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.235-249
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• 2018

The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has been known as one of the most effective theories for automatic ship berthing, as it has learning ability and mimics the actions of the human brain when performing the stages of ship berthing. However, existing ANN controllers can only bring a ship into a berth in a certain port, where the inputs of the ANN are the same as those of the teaching data. This means that those ANN controllers must be retrained when the ship arrives to a new port, which is time-consuming and costly. In this research, by using the head-up coordinate system, which includes the relative bearing and distance from the ship to the berth, a novel ANN controller is proposed to automatically control the ship into the berth in different ports without retraining the ANN structure. Numerical simulations were performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. First, teaching data were created in the original port to train the neural network; then, the controller was tested for automatic berthing in other ports, where the initial conditions of the inputs in the head-up coordinate system were similar to those of the teaching data in the original port. The results showed that the proposed controller has good performance for ship berthing in ports.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.121-127
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose a distance measurement system for automatic berthing control using a stereo camera mounted on a rotation control device, and a radial pattern target. Automatically controlling the position and attitude of a ship aims to prevent maritime accidents due to human error. Our goal is to measure the relative distance between a ship and an onshore or offshore target for berthing. Therefore, the distance should be continuously measured while tracking a fixed point on a target. To this end, we developed a stereo camerabased distance measurement system that satisfied these requirements. This paper describes the structure and principle of the measurement system. We validate the distance error for target incline due to the relative position and attitude between a camera and a target in miniature scale. In addition, the findings of an experiment in an outdoor environment demonstrate that the proposed measurement system has accuracy within 1 m at a range of 20-100 m which is the acceptable accuracy for automatic berthing.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.90-101
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• 1999

This paper is concerned with the design of automatic ship maneuvering system including automatic path tracking controller and automatic berthing controller. The optimal control technique is employed to design the automatic path tracking controller, which is based on the linearized equations of ship motion. The numerical example shows that the automatic path tracking controller is capable of tracking the line between way points which are determined by pilot a priori. The decentralized control technique is employed to design the automatic berthing controller. In addition to the automatic path tracking controller, the fuzzy logic controller is used to control the forward speed. The numerical example shows that the automatic berthing controller can be successfully implemented.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.589-596
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• 2008

In this paper, Artificial Neural Network(ANN) is applied to automatic berthing control for a ship. ANN is suitable for a maneuvering such as ship's berthing, because it can describe non-linearity of the system. Multi-layer perceptron which has more than one hidden layer between input layer and output layer is applied to ANN. Using a back-propagation algorithm with teaching data, we trained ANN to get a minimal error between output value and desired one. For the automatic berthing control of a containership, we introduced low speed maneuvering mathematical models. The berthing control with the structure of 8 input layer units in ANN is compared to 6 input layer units. From the simulation results, the berthing conditions are satisfied, even though the berthing paths are different.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.431-437
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• 2006

In this paper vector code correlation(VCC) method and an algorithm to promote the image-processing performance in building an effective measurement system using cameras are described far automatically berthing and controlling the ship equipped with side-thrusters. In order to realize automatic ship berthing, it is indispensable that the berthing assistant system on the ship should continuously trace a target in the berth to measure the distance to the target and the ship attitude, such that we can make the ship move to the specified location. The considered system is made up of 4 apparatuses compounded from a CCD camera, a camera direction controller, a popular PC with a built-in image processing board and a signal conversion unit connected to parallel port of the PC. The object of this paper is to reduce the image-processing time so that the berthing system is able to ensure the safety schedule against risks during approaching to the berth. It could be achieved by composing the vector code image to utilize the gradient of an approximated plane found with the brightness of pixels forming a certain region in an image and verifying the effectiveness on a commonly used PC. From experimental results, it is clear that the proposed method can be applied to the measurement system for automatic ship berthing and has the image-processing time of fourfold as compared with the typical template matching method.